I was explaining to someone the other day about the work we do at Crisis Care Network. I was talking about how we respond after Critical Incidents or trauma events to help employees “bounce back”. I was asked what kind of events did we handle most frequently, and I responded that our three most common events were death of an employee, robbery, and staff size readjustments. Again, I was asked, were these deaths happening in the workplace? Were the robberies the type we see on TV and in the movies with guns being brandished and shots fired? No, I said, they are most often natural or accidental deaths outside the workplace the vast majority of the time, and the robberies rarely involve any weapons that are shown or anyone actually hurt in the robbery. So my friend said, these are not really trauma or crisis events in the normal sense of the world, but rather they are events that are disruptive in the workplace!
It was then a light bulb went off over my head (if I were a cartoon character). We talk, teach about, and promote CIR in the Workplace as responding to a trauma event when in fact, they are most frequently a highly disruptive event that might be traumatic to the families of the victims, but are really far more often disruptive to the normal flow of work within the workplace due to their often sudden unexpected nature.
The most common themes that employees have after these unexpected events has to do with grief and loss rather than traumatic stress reactions. They want to know that their reactions are common, but more importantly they want to know what to do about them. They want to know what to say to the families of the deceased, or what to say to their own loved ones after the event.
Maybe we should be talking about Critical Incidents as things that are disruptive to the workplace and get away from using terms like crisis or trauma for people to get a better idea of the worthwhile work we do for employees to help the workplace recover.
About the Author: Dennis Potter is a licensed social worker, certified addiction counselor and a Fellow, by the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. Dennis helped to form one of the first community based Crisis Response Teams in the country, and was a founding member of the Mid-West Michigan CISM Team and the Michigan Crisis Response Association. Since 1989, Dennis has helped to train many of the CISM teams in Michigan and in 24 other states.
Dennis has conducted or consulted on all manner of traumatic events for communities, businesses, schools, police, fire and emergency services personnel, the U S Post Office, and community mental health agencies. He is frequently called upon for consultation after particularly difficult events. In addition to his trauma response experience he has received training and supervision in Cognitive Therapy from the Beck Institute in Philadelphia, PA and participated in train the trainer courses in Motivational Interviewing. He is a national and international presenter and trainer. He has presented at the last 10 International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF) World Congresses and was awarded the ICISF Excellence in Training and Educations Award at the ICISF 2011 World Congress. He has provided motivational training to a variety of mental health, substance abuse agencies and businesses. In addition, he has provided training in both Latvia and Denmark.
